Director's Letter Fall 2015

The return to Princeton this fall of the Pearlman Collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art after an eighteen-month, four-nation tour is cause for celebration. The opportunity to present nearly the whole of this collection in our exhibition galleries as Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art from the Pearlman Collection is one that will not come again soon: the extraordinary watercolors by Paul Cézanne are of such delicacy that we will not be able to show them again in their entirety for perhaps another decade.

The works of art collected by Henry and Rose Pearlman beginning in the 1940s create an assemblage of masterworks that span three generations. From Gustave Courbet and Honoré Daumier, to Edgar Degas, to Vincent van Gogh, to Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, to Cézanne, to Amedeo Modigliani and Chaïm Soutine, the collection tells stories about the history of modern art, the relationships among artists, and the thrill of the chase for a mid-twentieth-century collector. It is truly a privilege for Princeton to have been the custodian of this collection since 1976 and to once again be able to share it with our students, our faculty, our community, and visitors from all over the world.

Apart from the art historical issues to be discovered in Cézanne and the Modern, the exhibition reminds us yet again of the irreplaceable role of collectors and collecting in the history of public engagement with art. Indeed, this has been something of a theme of our exhibition program in recent years, as we have shared the works of collectors who continue to inform the depth and range of the holdings at Princeton and who sustain a commitment to making their collections widely accessible. Our summer exhibitions, Painting on Paper and Collecting Contemporary, have both provided vivid testament to this: The former is a compendium of past benefaction to Princeton and of the generosity of lenders in our extended family; the latter is wholly the result of the passion for avant-garde art of Lenore and Herbert Schorr, Princeton Graduate School Class of 1963.

As I consider this Museum’s collecting history, the names of many donors come to mind, including a few whose generosity has fundamentally shaped this institution—names that ought to be as well remembered as those that adorn many of the buildings on the Princeton campus. Among these is William Cowper Prime, Class of 1843, whose gift of a vast collection of ceramics and other objects in 1890—known for him and his wife as the Trumbull-Prime Collection—is considered the foundational collection of the modern-day Museum, established in 1882. Frank Jewett Mather, who became director of the Museum in 1922, is another. Not only did he establish a collecting strategy in medieval and Renaissance art, but he also donated his own collection to the Museum he led and purchased works for the Museum with his own resources. We are fortunate indeed in the eclecticism of his tastes, which ran from Classical and pre-Columbian antiquities to American drawings. Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895, was another voracious collector—described by Mather as “the most enthusiastic, learned, various, and unexpected collector I have ever known”—whose gifts to Princeton numbered in the thousands.

In one leap, Platt’s gift brought to Princeton what is still one of the finest collections of old master Italian drawings in the nation. Much the same could be said of David Hunter McAlpin, Class of 1920, whose gift of nearly 600 photographs in 1971 made Princeton a pioneer in collecting fine art photography; or of our great friend Gillett Griffin, who acquired extraordinary things for the Museum as curator of the art of the ancient Americas from 1967 to 2004, and whose promised gift of his private collection has built for us holdings in this area that are among the world’s finest.

One of the great pleasures of guiding this Museum in the twenty-first century is witnessing how much this tradition of collecting and giving endures. Each year our Annual Report enumerates the generosity of the many individuals who make gifts of works of art that build on existing strengths, fill in gaps, and enable vital teaching and fresh scholarship. Names such as Adler, Callimanopulos, Cotsen, Feld, Fisher, Forbes, Haskell, Malkin, Milberg, Nasher, Ross, Sherrerd, and many more build on a Princeton tradition that dates to 1755, when the first work of art was gifted to Old Nassau.

As you explore these pages and the galleries of Cézanne and the Modern, I hope that you, too, might be inspired to consider acquiring and living with works of art. A Van Gogh might be beyond your budget, but some powerful work of art is likely to be approachable if you seek out what you love, buy against fashion, or take a risk on an unknown artist. And if one day you are motivated to consider making a gift to Princeton of a work of art, you, too, might take your place in this great company of individuals who have shaped the experience of the Art Museum.

James Christen Steward

Nancy A. Nasher–David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director